About

Our business is built to transform yours

Amazing things are created here

Breakthrough products don’t just happen. From idea to execution, tekMountain brings vision, innovation, performance and passion to every launch. Every collaboration. Every relationship. Every partnership.

A Different Type of Climb

tekMountain is redefining the modern corporate innovation center model. Sure, everyday access to industry thought leaders, exceptional mentors, amazing collaborative space, pivotal partnerships and established venture capital channels are all in place to help you grow or launch your startup.

What’s different?

tekMountain is built, literally, on top of a very successful company.

CastleBranch is one of the top 10 employment screening and compliance management companies in the nation. We're critically influential in the key market segments of Education, Healthcare and Human Resources. We’ve been disruptively inventive for years. And, that has led to some incredible market share.

When tekMountain partners with startups, we seek out innovative ideas that help change the markets we serve. It’s when our unique ability to drive change aligns with a startup’s desire to challenge the status quo - that 's when transformational products are created.

A startup with backup

tekMountain has the heart of a startup paired with the structured brainpower of a fortune 500 company. CastleBranch leadership is actively involved in tekMountain ventures. That means direct access to a formidable executive leadership team. Information Technology, Product Development, Accounting, Marketing, Sales and Customer Service functions are all baked in - all ready to go.

tekMountain Team

Brett Martin

CEO

Brett Martin

CEO

Brett Martin is the founder of tekMountain and a serial entrepreneur. He builds and influences companies with a contagious passion and has an impressive track record of innovation at the highest level. As CEO of CastleBranch, Brett has taken his original three person startup and has grown it into a national leader employing 400 people.

Brett has coached some of the Nation’s top senior executives, holds relevant patents, launched charities receiving national recognition and has started and scaled dozens of successful companies. In 2010, Brett’s non-profit startup HeartsApart.org received White House recognition as one of the country’s most influential charities dedicated to serving our military families. He serves on several prominent boards and is the Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Brett earned his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - and a BA from Concordia University in Montreal Canada.

Follow Brett’s blog at myfamilytable.com. His love of food and photography is matched only by his desire to share it.

Mark Johnson

Executive Management Consultant

Mark Johnson

Executive Management Consultant

Mark Johnson exemplifies many of the values of CastleBranch but most importantly, Mark knows how to push himself and others to unleash the potential of our business. As executive management consultant for CastleBranch since 2014, he excels in discovering hidden potential and constant innovation. “There are no walls at CastleBranch,” he says, “simply doors that need to be opened. If we can’t find the door, we build it and walk through it.”

Throughout his career in technology, including leadership roles at Arrow Electronics, Mark has amassed broad experience ranging from large, established companies to startups. He has wielded substantial P&L responsibilities and propelled greater interconnectivity among North American, Asian and European marketplaces.

Mark is driven by the daily opportunity to ask, “What if?” He is not afraid to roll up his sleeves in his hands-on approach, while also being strategic in contributing to thought leadership. Mark is constantly seeking new ways to foster growth for each employee to develop and contribute at higher levels than before. What inspires him at the end of the day is the privilege to see that each organization is well tuned and running efficiently.

Mark is committed to give back by mentoring and donating time in community programs while remaining active in the lives of his children.

Sean Ahlum

Senior Director

Sean Ahlum

Senior Director

Since 2014, Sean serves as both Senior Director of Innovation for CastleBranch and Senior Director of tekMountain, the southeast’s premier innovation center.

Sean embodies a philosophy of ingenuity from within, ingenuity from without. He is dually focused: on the one hand, he pushes the potential of CastleBranch’s flagship technologies to revolutionize their markets. On the other, he leverages the raw power of tekMountain’s startups to spark interconnectivity, growth and opportunity for the southeast—and throughout the US. Together, through the implementation of lean startup principles in a corporate environment, Sean continually revitalizes CastleBranch’s mission and goals as an industry leader, and uses his seasoned experience to catapult both tekMountain and CastleBranch squarely into the eyes of the nation’s business spotlight.

Sean takes seriously the mission of community—to make the technology and innovations of our time a vital and meaningful part of public life. Through tekMountain’s early-stage acquisitions, mergers and partnerships, he’s forged a tech community inclusive of companies large and small, mature and new. As a member of the board of directors for InnovateNC, Cucalorus, and the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, and as a member of the North Carolina Technology Association Board of Advisors, Sean fosters an aligned action network of leadership that will propel southeastern NC toward its true economic potential—to thrive.

Sean holds a BA, MFA in Creative Writing and an MBA, Business Administration and Management from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Lauren Henderson

President

Lauren Henderson

President

Lauren Henderson joined CastleBranch in 2006 and serves as chief financial officer. Lauren and her team provide stellar guidance to help shape, support and exceed the critical financial component in the company's successful overall growth. Her commitment to excellence is reflected in her approach to pioneer innovative solutions that create win/win situations and provide rock-solid foundations for the client and company.

She is persistent, driven and industrious. Lauren exemplifies many of the values of CastleBranch, and her career trajectory is a stunning example to those around her—starting in the Accounting Department and developing into the financial leader of the organization. Lauren also has a strong desire to share her knowledge with those around her, especially students. She is committed to mentoring students at the University of North Carolina Wilmington through the Cameron Executive Network, and is a member of the Cape Fear Community College Accounting Advisory Board.

Lauren is an Aresty Scholar of the Aresty Institute of Executive Education at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. She earned her bachelor of science degree from Ramapo College of New Jersey in business administration, concentrating in management with a minor in public policy, and holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Amanda Sipes

Community Manager

Amanda Sipes

Community Manager

For questions about tekMountain please email amandas@tekmountain.com

Kelly Brown

Business Development Associate

Kelly Brown

Business Development Associate

Elyssa Miller

Innovation Associate

Elyssa Miller

Innovation Associate

New to tekMountain in 2018, Elyssa brings fire and feeling to exploring and defining new opportunities to stakeholders. With a unique background in corporate innovation, edtech, healthcare, and operations, she is a natural fit for the Tekmountain team.

At Pearson, the world’s largest education company, Elyssa led a cross-functional team to dive deep into innovative solutions for higher education and 21st-century skills assessment. At Comcast, she applied her natural problem-solving skills to the analysis of product solutions, managing the deployment of multiple products for the Comcast legal operations team. Elyssa is a 2014 graduate of James Madison University with a degree in communication sciences and disorders.

A broad perspective and ambition to learn activate Elyssa to provide high value in uncommon ways. Her love of design thinking, efficiency improvement, and innovation is a constant accelerating force.

Fran Scarlett

Mentor

Fran Scarlett

Mentor

Fran Scarlett is the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) Director of programs and services and business growth advisor. She specializes in helping a member network of 150+ news organizations understand and leverage their value propositions to build business models that maximize their potential for revenue growth and long term sustainability. Prior to INN, Fran served as the regional director of the Small Business & Technology Development Center (SBTDC) at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She was responsible for launching and growing small businesses and securing capital investment with the goal of creating jobs in the region. She remains an adjunct faculty member of the Cameron School of Business where she teaches Entrepreneurship and Organizational Behavior. Prior to her move to North Carolina, Scarlett ran her own management consulting firm, Scarlett Ink Media, providing strategic and tactical consulting to news media organizations with an emphasis on developing new revenue models; product development and cross-platform collaborations. Scarlett received her MBA from Harvard University and a B.S. in Mass Communications from Boston University.

Matt Magne

Mentor

Matt Magne

Mentor

Matt is a connector, ex-rocker, and avid Catan player currently working as the SAS Global Product Marketing Manager for Big Data and Data Management. A recovering entrepreneur and coder, Matt has taught entrepreneurship in prison and spoken at numerous conferences. Previously, Matt was a Solutions Architect at SAS, a Technical Sales Engineer at IBM, and has held positions in sales enablement, consulting, and software development.

Matt received his BS, cum laude, in Computer Engineering at Boston University, has done graduate work in Object Oriented Development and completed his MBA at UNCW.

George Taylor

Mentor

George Taylor

Mentor

George Taylor is a successful entrepreneur with a 30-year history of founding companies that develop innovative products and services, and he is excited to be bringing one more to life. In his history as an entrepreneur, George has founded six companies ranging from breakthrough technology to automotive performance.

National Speed – Working to be 1st national performance shop brand: Profitable & Growing

Adam Burke

Mentor

Adam Burke

Mentor

Delivering quick, sustainable results to increase revenues, reduce costs, and maximize profitability by rapidly improving all functional areas is the common thread across Adam Burke’s diverse executive career. He received his B.S. from Rensselaer in Mechanical Engineering, with a minor in Economics and concentration in Manufacturing and graduated Summa Cum Laude from Boston University with an M.B.A in Marketing and Entrepreneurship.

After starting his career on the functional front lines of manufacturing, sales, and marketing, Adam continued to excel in leadership and executive roles in both traditional global Fortune 10 (PG/GE) and start-up/turn-around businesses. With leadership experience across all major markets including CPG, Medical, Industrial, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Service, Telecommunications, Foods and Drinks, Pharmaceutical, and Nutritionals– he has created his own entrepreneurial approach to helping companies and teams achieve results beyond traditional boundaries.

Adam is passionate about helping grow businesses, developing teams, and solving problems in fast-paced new or competitive environments. He is frequently asked to lecture at top universities to share his business strategies, entrepreneurial approach, and leadership experiences with students. He and his teams have won many customer and industry awards for leadership, customer service, product innovation, and global partnerships.

Michael Cain

Mentor

Michael Cain

Mentor

Michael Cain is the founder, investor, and managing partner of Wilmington Investor Network, LLC an angel investment fund he formed in July 2004. He is a founder and managing Partner of Guardant Partners, LLC an investment management partnership and also a managing partner of their special situations fund both located in Greensboro, North Carolina. He is an investor and manager of Emergent Growth Fund II in Gainesville, FL. His angel funds have invested in over 50 early stage startup companies totally angel investments in excess of $25M. Each investment requires continuing angel involvement, mentorship, advice, and consultation. Cain is Co-Chairman of the Angel Resource Institute, a non-profit angel research and education foundation originally created and funded by the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City. ARI is the sister organization to the Angel Capital Association comprised of over 240 US based angel groups representing over 12,000 active angle early stage investors. He also serves on several for-profit and non-profit boards. Prior to becoming a full time angel investor in 1995, Cain started, operated, and successfully exited a variety of businesses. These ranged from computer software sales and service, to drying equipment to the paper industry. During the 1980’s he developed a 28 store regional Wendy’s Franchise. Cain received his Juris Doctor degree from Syracuse University School of Law and his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Vermont. Prior to becoming a full time entrepreneur, he practiced commercial law and was a States Attorney Prosecutor in Vermont.

Ian Oeschger

Mentor

Ian Oeschger

Mentor

Ian Oeschger (@oeschger) is an information architect and right-brained software developer for IBM, currently working at developerWorks, web development, Bluemix. He’s also a writer, avid reader, and local do-good volunteer in Wilmington, NC. He consults as an architect and web developer for bookstore trade organizations, environmental impact firms, education technologists, and others. He’s worked at a number of start-ups in the Silicon Valley, including Netscape, where he contributed to and published broadly on the open source project Mozilla. Before All That, he was a bookstore owner, an English major, English teacher, and an award-winning fiction writer, among other things.

Bill Burke

Mentor

Bill Burke

Mentor

Bill is presently the member Manager of Quality Technical Services, LLC. He developed Qualtech’s unique business model of a design build project approach and applied it to the automation of Client’s manufacturing processes. He has extensive experience in project management, estimating engineering and construction costs, directing design and construction personnel, negotiating contracts, and project controls. He has focused his efforts on refining techniques for project planning and cost control, timeline development, resource procurement and risk management. Client industries have included Bulk Pharmaceutical, Pulp and Paper, Petrochemical, Engineered Resins, Food Processing and Utilities Processes. Since 2005 he has founded and co-founded start-up companies focused on the development of bio-based fuels and solar power generation. His passion is the leveraging of technology to champion sustainable energy and transportation solutions. Bill is a registered Professional Engineer in North Carolina. He also is an active executive member of Wilmington Investor Network, LLC. WIN is an angel investment group whose mission is to provide critical capital and successful business expertise to young start-up companies.

Marc Stockman

Mentor

Marc Stockman

Mentor

Marc Stockman is current President and co-founder of Natural Health Sherpa, a provider of in-depth, science-based, independent reviews of natural health therapies and remedies that have been proven to be both safe and effective and are backed by good science -- multiple double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized studies.

Prior to this, he co-founded UltraWellness, an integrated health and wellness company, which he recently sold. Prior to that he, consulted for the top financial publishers in the world, including Phillips Publishing and The Motley Fool. His direct response, product development and business development expertise in the publishing area was honed in his first publishing venture, SmartPortfolio, which he co-founded in 1999 and subsequently sold to TheStreet.com in 2001.

Marc's diverse background in marketing, business development, product development, technology, health, finance and investing, consumer psychology and publishing allows him to bring a uniquely holistic perspective to any new opportunity to make the most of it.

Merrette Moore

Mentor

Merrette Moore

Mentor

Merrette Moore is the founder and Managing Director of Lookout Capital, a private equity investment and services firm based in Raleigh, NC. He has 20 years experience working in private company investing and commercial banking. During the past 15 years, Merrette has been involved in over 30 private investments in a variety of industries, including consumer goods, manufacturing, services, biotech, healthcare and IT.

Randall Johnson

Mentor

Randall Johnson

Mentor

Randall Johnson serves as the NC Biotechnology Center Southeastern Office Executive Director to strengthen the regional economy and to improve the quality of life across North Carolina, through economic development action related to marine biotech, industrial biotech, renewable bioproducts/energy, agricultural biotech, and clinical research.

Johnson has extensive experience in local and regional economic development, with a focus on entrepreneurial development, opportunity-driven business plan creation, cluster growth, and knowledge sector development. He graduated cum laude from Wake Forest University with an undergraduate concentration in psychology, and he holds an MBA from the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University, where he concentrated in IT Management, Operations Management, and Entrepreneurship.

Johnson has started and operated his own business, conducted scientific research for Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and taught entrepreneurial skills to budding start-up entrepreneurs.

He has completed several International Economic Development Council certifications, including Basic Economic Development, Technology-led Economic Development, Entrepreneurial and Small Business Development Strategies, Real Estate Development and Reuse, Business Retention and Expansion, and Economic Development Strategic Planning.

He serves on the boards of business, civic, and arts-related organizations in the region and state, including the Executive Committee of the Southeastern Economic Development Commission, North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, North Carolina Economic Developers Association, Institute for Emerging Issues Environments Council, and the Advisory Committee for Biotechnology in Southeastern North Carolina, which he helped found. His work with statewide partners led to the creation of North Carolina’s Marine Bio-Technologies Center of Innovation and the NC Coast Clinical Research Initiative.

Johnson is a graduate of Leadership North Carolina Class XV and was awarded the U.S. President’s Volunteer Service Award, a national honor award recognizing individuals who have answered the call to make a lifelong commitment to volunteer service.

He and his wife Leigh live with their 2-year-old son, Wallace “Ace”, in Wilmington, NC.

Ellen Long

Mentor

Ellen Long

Mentor

Ellen is the COO of Long Business Advisors, LLC a premier business consulting company that focuses on helping business owners grow, transition, and sell their businesses. She is also a financial advisor for Long Family Office, Inc. a multi-family office that serves high net worth clients and aids them to not only leave, but live their legacy. Ellen was born with a love for entrepreneurialism, and a passion that comes from striving, from achieving. She’s had a front row seat to the entire lifecycle of the entrepreneur – from startups pitching their ideas at IMAF & WIN (Inception Micro Angel Fund and Wilmington Investor Network) to established owners exiting their businesses.

Ellen earned her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from North Greenville University and her M.B.A. from Liberty University. She is also a graduate of the Leadership Wilmington Class of 2015, and serves as a board member and finance chair for Cape Fear Women in Tech.

Mike Rhoades

Mentor

Mike Rhoades

Mentor

Mike Rhoades has expertise in managing large, clinically integrated Accountable Care Organizations within a multi-specialty environment. Intimate knowledge in HIE/CIN data integration and aggregation, population health risk stratification and analytics, care management infrastructure and interventions, and the strategic development of clinically integrated networks. Unique knowledge and experience in behavioral health and PAC integration. His leadership success translating business models into growth strategy that grew market share and strategically positioned health services organization. Experience managing complex mergers and acquisitions, driving change management and sensitive cultural integrations in matrix environment. Mike is a change agent and growth driver with 20-year successful track record building and positioning health care entities for progress. Expert in driving enterprise strategies that maximize organization’s value proposition to medical community and payers while boosting revenue and margins, improving patient care, increasing physician satisfaction, and refining business infrastructure. Clear understanding of legal, regulatory, and political issues/trends in health care. He is an expert in public policy and advocacy with capacity to build consensus at all levels and drive realistic solutions. Regularly connect with business and healthcare leaders; leverage robust network to drive growth strategies. Able to coordinate, integrate, and influence others outside immediate span of control. He has strengths in finance and investment strategies with full P&L responsibility to complement full range of hands-on managerial and business experience including strategy, financing, operations, sales, and marketing. Requested to sit on multiple entrepreneur boards to provide strategic counsel and guidance.

Adam Shay

Mentor

Adam Shay

Mentor

Adam Shay, CPA (NC License Number 35961), MBA, is an entrepreneur and accountant dedicated to helping clients make intelligent financial decisions and to legally minimize their tax liability. Adam has built a successful CPA firm that focuses on working with entrepreneurs in various capacities to help them achieve success. Working with entrepreneurs keeps Adam and his team energized and makes it fun to get up every morning. Adam is very involved and supportive of growing the Wilmington entrepreneurial community.

Prior to starting his CPA firm, Adam led a regional business that grew from 6 to 15 offices over a 5 year period. He also has had experience in financial system process and software design and development. Adam has a B.S. in Commerce (Finance and Entrepreneurship) from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the University of Maryland (Finance and Entrepreneurship).

Keith Forkin

Mentor

Keith Forkin

Mentor

Bruce Mancinelli

Mentor

Bruce Mancinelli

Mentor

Mr. Mancinelli has more than 45 years of experience in managing and mentoring high technology companies and not for profit organizations. With a background that includes senior executive positions in sales and marketing as well as Founder, Chief Executive Officer and President with seven high technology companies, Mr. Mancinelli offers a range of skills that can adapt from small startup companies to medium sized organizations and large corporations. Known as a team builder he has an exceptional way with people and strength in his ability to communicate, direct and manage others. Most recently Mr. Mancinelli served as Executive Director of the INCspire Education Foundation, a 501c3 organization, which includes an incubator program where more than 125 startups called INCspire their home and where they received their mentoring support services and where INCspire had a client graduation rate of over 96% since operations began in 2000.

Mr. Mancinelli studied languages at Bethany College, West Virginia and is a Vietnam era US Army Veteran. He is a Certified Program Manager and Facilitator for the Kauffman Foundation New Venture and Growth Venture FastTrac programs and active participant in the various technology programs. Mr. Mancinelli is also qualified to facilitate the implementation of the Performance Culture System (PCS), a cloud based employee and organization assessment system.

Paul Baron

Mentor

Paul Baron

Mentor

Paul Baron is a hands-on Senior Sales, Marketing, Strategic Partnership and Business Development Executive with 3+ decades’ experience designing and executing ‘go to market strategies’ for growing companies, high-performing sales teams and partners that have generated double-digit growth and over $1Billion in sales. Paul is ‘industry agnostic’, meaning he can provide direction and support to achieve goals in any industry, for any product, service, or technology. Paul's has personally launched and exited several start-ups, including 2 restaurants in NY and FL, 2 sporting goods retail stores, a software development company delivering a communications software application that was distributed by AT&T, and an online community news and advertising publication serving over 500 cities nationwide. His experience with start-up, pre-IPO and Public Companies spans B2B, B2C, retail, manufacturing, distribution, and franchising. Paul is an articulate communicator with outstanding public speaking and presentation skills, with working knowledge of CRM, mobile, social media and e-commerce solutions. Paul lives in Wilmington with his wife Maureen, 2 Portuguese Water Dogs Walter & Victor, and is a competitive tennis player and swimmer.

Mike Duncan

Mentor

Mike Duncan

Mentor

Mike Duncan is a third-generation Wilmington native and UNCW alumnus. In 1997 he co-founded Sage Island, a local marketing agency. Led by a digital-minded team that began as a programming company serving high-profile clients, Sage Island agency quickly evolved with the internet. Today, Sage Island has built a powerful reputation through award-winning designs, full-service brand strategy, and internet marketing services. Sage’s clients range from hundreds of local businesses to a number of Fortune 500 companies both nationally and internationally.

As CEO and Creative Director, Mike oversees a staff of 20 talented marketing strategists, graphic designers, and programmers. He is a nationally sought-after speaker for ecommerce, social media, web design and SEO. Mike, a designer at his core, ensures Sage Island’s process is a dynamic one that allows for creativity to be paramount, leading the way to powerful marketing solutions for its clients. He is an innovative thinker and entrepreneur with expertise in start-ups, turnaround and rapid growth.

Unafraid to experiment with cutting edge technologies, developing tools and constantly evolving Sage Island’s toolkit, he keeps the agency at the forefront in the Wilmington area and far beyond. Mike also has founded several other businesses, both on and off the web. Mike and his team’s involvement in these businesses yields the dynamic, comprehensive and cutting-edge approach Sage Island is known for.

Bud Watts

Mentor

Bud Watts

Mentor

Bud is an experienced professional with a career characterized by more than 25 years' in an extremely technically specialized field. A leader in the area of Industrial Distribution Management, Custom Design Fabrications and Manufacturing practices. Seasoned in the roles of Operations, Quality compliance and Finance. Subject matter expert in the High Purity industry verticals including Pharmaceutical, Food, Beverage, Health Care and Life Science.

Bud successfully launched a start-up in 1997 that materialized into an industry leading Hygienic manufacture of Process equipment and Medical Device development, averaging more than $9mm annually until 2008 when the business was merged with a competitive $40mm business unit. Bud managed the integration and worked for an additional two years developing the corporate culture and strategic development plan.

Bud is a Principal with Axiom Collaborative providing professional Business consulting to resource providers within the Life Sciences sector. Axiom currently works with more than twenty organizations including Architectural Engineering, Public Utilities, Site Selection, Construction Management, Capital equipment and Service providers focused in this space.

Keith Markfield

Mentor

Keith Markfield

Mentor

Keith Markfield is a software architect and developer. He is currently part of a software and innovation incubator that uses new and existing IP and resources to nurture startups from creation to exit. Previously, Keith was part of a small team at a healthcare company that exited in 2009. After acquisition, he remained with the company and managed a team of software developers for several years. Spending time in nimble startup and corporate worlds have given Keith a broad range of experience in workplace culture.

Keith's personality gives him the role of playing devil's advocate, something that he enjoys. This is crucial to the world of startups to help map out priorities in moving toward MVP and beyond. Learning and experimentation never stop in the software world, as technologies are ever evolving. Staying up to date and knowing which tools are the right ones for the job are vital.

Keith lives in Wilmington with his wife and two children. In his free time, he enjoys camping, surfing and playing almost any sport.

Jason Ashby

Mentor

Jason Ashby

Mentor

Jason Ashby is a Site Reliability Engineer at FireEye, Inc., an intelligence-led cybersecurity company that provides products and services that protect businesses against the growing number of cyber threats that exist today. As an SRE at FireEye, Jason helps to build highly available and scalable systems that can process millions of events per second, and works with engineering teams in a DevOps role to build continuous delivery pipelines. Previously, Jason worked at IMS, Inc., a government contractor in the public health space, as a developer utilizing the SAS and R programming languages for statistical analyses in cancer studies. As a co-author, his work has been published in several medical journals, such as the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Jason is the owner of Team Six Consulting, a company that provides consulting on cloud computing and software development. He is also the founder and organizer of Advancing Technology in Wilmington, a tech Meetup group that meets monthly at Tek Mountain.

Besides tech, Jason’s passion is music. He is a local musician here in Wilmington, and his music can be heard on 98.3 The Penguin. He is also the founder of a start-up called MicTurn, a live streaming platform for musicians.

George Oliver

Mentor

George Oliver

Mentor

Joe Finley

Advisory Board

Joe Finley

Advisory Board

Joe Finley is the co-Founder of CastleBranch. CastleBranch is a nationally recognized background screening and compliance management company with a focus on providing solutions to Colleges and Universities. The mission of tekMountain is to expand the technology footprint in southeast NC by proving; a technology co-working space, an Edtech accelerator and Edtech solutions to the College and University clients of CastleBranch. Prior to CastleBranch Joe was involved in the world of coffee. Everything from managing a coffee shop to selling beans to selling espresso machines.

Joe sits on the Entrepreneurship Advisory Committee at UNCW as well as the Board of Directors of the Cameron School of Business. Joe is also actively involved as a mentor for the Cameron Executive Network and supports many local charities, such as W.A.R.M. and Communities in Schools. Joe graduated from UNC Chapel Hill with an English Literature degree.

Mattias MacDowell

Mentor

Mattias MacDowell

Mentor

Mattias MacDowell is a third generation serial entrepreneur from Southern California and 15 year digital marketing professional who bootstrapped his first company at 17. After serving in the US Army 82nd Airborne Division, he founded and exited several businesses in home services, medical devices, and ecommerce. Recently Mattias was the Senior Digital Marketing Strategist for 150 million dollar a year ecommerce company and currently is a Marketing Analytics and Strategy Consultant for Cisco Systems while also building a couple new startups. His expertise includes:

Digital marketing strategies

Marketing automation strategies

Marketing databases

Ecommerce

Growth strategies for bootstrapped startups

In his free time Mattias enjoys spending time with his wife and three children surfing, paddleboarding, skateboarding, and adventuring the outdoors.

Troy Smith

Advisory Board

Troy Smith

Advisory Board

Mr. Smith's practice experience encompasses a wide range of business law, from start-up businesses to complex transactional matters. He also represents health care providers, both private and institutional, and is regularly involved in government affairs, land use regulation, and municipal law matters. Mr. Smith has been a continuing legal education lecturer for the North Carolina Bar Association. He has been rated by his peers as being "preeminent" in his fields of law.

Tom Looney

Mentor

Tom Looney

Mentor

Tom’s career as a high-tech sales and business development executive mirrored the explosive growth of the industry he entered in 1982 after completing his MBA in Economics. Highlights included stints at Oracle Corp; NeXT (Apple); Active Software (Software AG); and NextChannel Partners (Microsoft). Tom's six years working closely with the legendary Steve Jobs at NeXT was particularly notable. From NeXT, he joined the pre-revenue startup team at Active Software in 1996, and helped lead the firm to a $100 million annual run rate in three years, culminating in a Goldman Sachs-led IPO. Tom retired as Industry Director of Microsoft's Homeland Security & Public Safety Industry Unit in 2008. He has served on a wide variety of Boards in organizations that reflect his business, education, health, and economic development interests.

Arijit Banik

Mentor

Arijit Banik

Mentor

Arijit Banik is a financial services professional located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Arijit has extensive experience in treasury, pension, and product management functions within Canada’s largest bank and custodian. In addition to having worked across the financial services value chain in a variety of senior positions, Arijit has experience in manufacturing and has worked in process engineering, quality management, and sales and marketing roles for Fortune 500 firms.

Arijit is a believer in and advocate for the power of entrepreneurship and recognizes that innovative start-ups are today just in the first inning of disrupting staid conventional “business as usual” thinking, and this disruption and innovation will continue for the coming generation.

In addition to injecting the relevance of respecting financial discipline and macroeconomic consequences for entrepreneurs, Arijit imparts the relevance of company culture in helping start-ups successfully ascend their personal mountains.

Arijit graduated from the University of Waterloo with Bachelor’s degrees in Chemical Engineering and Economics. He has an MBA from the Schulich School of Business (York University) and holds the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) and Chartered Investment Manager (CIM) designations.